Re: DIS: Proto: Crystal Improvements
On Tue, 2024-09-17 at 17:46 -0700, 4st nomic via agora-discussion wrote: > All previous crystals are destroyed, and each crystal owner gains crystals > equal to the total size of crystals they owned previously. Shouldn't this take instability into account? Otherwise, it disproportionately rewards people who recently amended rules, and the Assessor would be able to timing-scam that somewhat. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposals 9168-9178 (@Spendor)
On Sun, 2024-09-15 at 16:38 -0400, Mischief via agora-discussion wrote: > Agora had the other 7 stones. Agora can't own spendies, though, so the > Lost and Found Department ends up with those. The proposal only compensated players. IIRC Agora isn't a player at the moment (and I can't remember whether or not it ever has been – it seems like the sort of thing we would do). -- ais523
[ais523's History Corner] Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Herald] The Scroll of Agora (corrected)
On Tue, 2024-09-10 at 08:12 +1000, Matt Smyth via agora-discussion wrote: > But, (aside from the CoE) what is musicianship? I can't find it in > the rulesets. [Note: this article is a) written from memory and b) contains discussion of events that happened prior to when I first registered at Agora and that I worked out via extrapolation and second-hand information, so there may be inaccuracies.] Wins under past rulesets are still recorded in the Scroll, and in fact Agora has more repealed win conditions than it does current win conditions. Past win conditions tend to be grouped with current win conditions in the Herald's report if they are similar enough, but there are many past win conditions that are sufficiently different to get their own section. Musicianship existed under a currency system as Notes. Each player had a Key, which they could rarely switch to any of the twelve common pitches of musical notes. Doing certain things would award you a Note of a particular pitch relative to your Key (e.g. there was some action that would award you a Note that was a perfect fifth above your Key, I forget precisely which one). Notes were tradeable but inefficiently (IIRC you would lose two Notes of the same pitch, but the recipient would only gain one); in practice trading of the Notes themselves was very rare, but trading of actions that Notes could be spent to perform was much more common (i.e. instead of buying Notes from a player directly, players would buy the ability to determine how those Notes were spent). In order to win by Musicianship, you had to form a collection of Notes suitable for playing "Happy Birthday" (the tune of this was defined in the ruleset, and you could transpose it in order to match the Notes you had). The victory condition could be achieved only on Agora's birthday, but other than that, it wasn't particularly difficult – playing Agora actively for a year would almost always accumulate enough spare Notes to do that, unless you decided to spend them all on something else (and there wasn't much to spend them on other than voting limit increasers). Eventually, it got repealed because stockpiling Notes to win by Musicianship every year wasn't very interesting. Interestingly, a vestige of the Notes system still survives in the ruleset today, in the form of Ribbons. The predecessors of Notes, known as VCs, had colors rather than pitches. At some point, VCs were split into Notes and Ribbons, the idea being that Notes were spendable (and had pitches rather than colors), and Ribbons were a record of which of the various categories you'd been rewarded for at least once (with a full set of Ribbons winning you the game, as is still the case nowadays). For example, registering as a new player back then gave you the equivalent of a Welcome Package – the economic assets that were part of that turned into White VCs, and eventually into a White Ribbon. The exact categories of things that you got Notes and Ribbons for changed over time, as is usual for a nomic, to fit better into the role in question. At least one is still almost unchanged, though: back before I started playing, you could have obtained a Blue VC for judging an inquiry CFJ; and nowadays, you obtain a Blue Ribbon for the same thing. (We only have one sort of CFJ nowadays, which accounts for one of the differences in the rule; there were also minor changes due to changes in how appeals work.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: (Proposal, @Promotor) BUS: A New Economy
On Sun, 2024-09-08 at 00:32 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-discussion wrote: > On 9/7/24 21:47, ais523 via agora-business wrote: > > Create a new power 2 rule, "Megaphones": > > {{{ > > Megaphones are fungible assets. The Assessor is the recordkeepor > > of Megaphones. The creation, destruction and transfer of > > Megaphones is secured. > > > > Each player's voting strength on referenda on ordinary proposals > > is increased by the number of Megaphones e holds. > > }}} > > .. I admit I would really prefer not to pick up another report, > particularly one that might involve tracking a lot of transfers. I was hoping that this would reduce Assessor workload rather than increasing it (as you would no longer have to check office complexity – the Allocator checks that and the total is recorded in the asset holdings). Admittedly, I am not sure, and it rather depends on how people use the mechanism in practice (I am expecting Megaphone trades to be fairly rare, but don't know if that will actually be the case). > > Create a new power 2 rule, "Pendants": > > {{{ > > Pendants are fungible assets. The Promotor is the recordkeepor of > > Pendants. > > > > Immediately after a player submits a proposal, one Pendant is > > revoked from em, if possible. A player SHALL NOT submit a > > proposal if e owns no Pendants; violating this requirement has > > a Class of 4. > > > > A player CAN pay a fee of 4 Spendies to grant emself a Pendant. > > }}} > > This seems like a very high cost for proposals and likely to encourage > omnibuses, particularly given that we have no way to do it free as we > have previously. It's high because it's the *backup* mechanism (and if it wasn't high, people would just use it as the primary mechanism). There is a much more plentiful supply of Pendants from the Allocation. > > Create a new power 1.7 rule, "Pardons": > > {{{ > > Pardons are fungible assets. The Referee is the recordkeepor of > > Pardons. > > > > A player CAN pay a fee of 1 Pardon to revoke 1 Blot from a > > specified person. > > > > A player CAN pay a fee of 7 Spendies to grant emself 1 Pardon. > > }}} > > Pardons should be secured. I agree (it's pretty minor but would be an improvement). I'll submit a slightly revised version. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Proto: Chits
On Mon, 2024-09-02 at 17:19 -0500, Kiako via agora-discussion wrote: > - Sky Chit (6): If the flippor or the flippee (or both) is an officer > and e has published each of eir reports since that report's most > recent tardiness, the flippor and flippee each gain 1 stamp of the > other's type. "if neither has violated an obligation to perform a duty of eir office within the past week" (might need to go for "month" in order to find missed monthly duties) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Rulekeepor] Short Logical Ruleset - 1 Sep 2024
On Sun, 2024-09-01 at 03:02 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-discussion wrote: > On 9/1/24 02:58, Janet Cobb via agora-official wrote: > > THE SHORT LOGICAL RULESET > > > So... is this sufficient under the new reporting standard? This isn't > labeling the report as the "Rulekeepor's weekly report". > > Same question goes for the FLR/ACORN. The rule explicitly allows for publishing the report as a "series of documents". It's not obvious to me whether the subject line of the documents is sufficient to label the series as the Rulekeepor's report, but I think that by game custom, it might be (and weekly versus monthly doesn't have to be distinguished, although it could be). -- ais523
DIS: Re: (@Spendor, Stonemason, Collector, Illuminator, Assessor, Prime Minister, Herald) BUS: Stones again
On Sun, 2024-09-01 at 01:00 +0100, ais523 via agora-business wrote: > (Note that if other stone actions happen at around the same time as > this message – which is quite plausible close to a month boundary – it > is possible that some of these actions will fail due to Stone Costs > being wrong. They should succeed if nobody else interferes, though.) > > I pay a fee of 6 Spendies to transfer the Soul Stone to myself. > I pay a fee of 6 Spendies to transfer the Power Stone to myself. > I pay a fee of 6 Spendies to transfer the Radiance Stone to myself. > I Notice the Rock Garden, specifying myself. > (This works because I now own the Protection, Recursion, Blank, Grind, > Minty, Soul, Power and Radiance Stones.) > > I wield the Power Stone, specifying myself. > I wield the Radiance Stone, specifying myself. > I wield the Soul Stone, specifying the Hot Potato Stone. All the above failed due to actions by snail (our messages crossed). I feel prescient for writing the disclaimer. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (@ADoP) Prime Minister election
On Wed, 2024-08-28 at 17:23 -0400, Paul McDowell via agora-discussion wrote: > On Wed, Aug 28, 2024 at 5:01 PM Oliver Nguyen via agora-discussion < > agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote: > > > If you run out of spendies, that’s a massive issue > > > > Does it? If I run out, it becomes impossible for me to uphold the next > instance of the pledge, even if I try to. Surely if it's impossible to > uphold a pledge, one can't be considered to have broken it. Plus, I'd be > very surprised if there were more than 20 votes across the whole election, > let alone for me. No, it still counts as breaking the pledge – you're considered responsible for having made it in the first place. (It does get automatically forgiven if you're forced by the rules to do something you have no ability to do, but if it's self-inflicted, it still counts. See rule 2531, paragraphs (3) and (4).) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Sure, fine, whatever [ATTN: Herald]
On Tue, 2024-08-27 at 11:39 -0400, Paul McDowell via agora-discussion wrote: > On Tue, Aug 27, 2024 at 11:34 AM ais523 via agora-discussion < agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote: > > An overt intent to declare Apathy, however, is likely to be > > objected to by pretty much everyone, so there's not much point in > > trying. > > Fair point. 'Tis a silly rule, then. The idea is that if someone finds a scam that lets them perform a tabled action *despite* objections, that they can use Apathy as a mechanism to win the game with it, rather than having to cause a lot of gamestate damage in an attempt to escalate it into a win. Overt intents to declare Apathy don't work very well, but if the rules are broken, there might be some less overt way to do it. Elsethread, you wrote: > And it's not clear to me from any rule that you must say "I intend > to..." in order to make an intent. I don't know about anyone else, > but I only do things that I intend to do, so to me "I do X" implies > "I intend to do X". This is the sort of scam that, if it worked, might potentially be a good use for Apathy. However, I suspect it doesn't work due to the third paragraph of rule 1728; that defines "intend" as a synonym for "table an intent", which requires the intent to be made "explicitly" (otherwise it doesn't count). -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Sure, fine, whatever [ATTN: Herald]
On Tue, 2024-08-27 at 15:07 +, Oliver Nguyen via agora-discussion wrote: > You should have specified Janet as well. If you did this, e would be > less likely to object. In general, if you're planning to run some sort of scam that involves nobody noticing what you're up to, it's best to bribe at least me and Janet, and possibly Murphy as well – we're some of the most likely to spot what's going on. An overt intent to declare Apathy, however, is likely to be objected to by pretty much everyone, so there's not much point in trying. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Propositions 9159-9167
On Tue, 2024-08-20 at 16:47 -0400, Mischief via agora-discussion wrote: > On 8/20/24 8:49 AM, ais523 via agora-business wrote: > > > > 9162~ Mischief 1.0 Shameless Bribery 2A > > AGAINST: I am philosophically opposed to bribing people to pass > > proposals using assets/rewards that are created by the proposal itself, > > because there's no cost to it > > Isn't that -- or a scam -- pretty much the point of Black Ribbons > specifically, though? It's more interesting to bribe people with things you already own (e.g. Stamps or Spendies) – that way you can convert an economic advantage into a permanent reward. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Registrar] Weekly report
On Sun, 2024-08-18 at 14:12 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-discussion wrote: > juan wrote: > > However, there are strict requirements on consent for registration, so a > > report couldn't reasonably register someone without express consent. But > > that seems sketchy. > > > > Of course, I could be wrong, and I always love to simplify reports! > > Also couldn't reasonably re-register someone who deregistered (and > didn't subsequently intend to re-register). CFJ 3583 <https://agoranomic.org/cases/?3583> is directly relevant (it discusses a situation which could potentially have ratified a former player into being a player – it didn't work). I am not sure that the precedent is correct, though: rule 1551 has higher power than rule 869, so might be able to override the consent restriction on registration, and that wasn't discussed in the judgement at all. (Rule 2201 has equal power, and loses the tiebreak, but I think rule 1551's power is the power that's relevant for the change.) -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: (@Arbitor) Judging CFJs 4080 and 4081
On Sun, 2024-08-11 at 19:29 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-business wrote: > I recommend a proposal to more explicitly remove the fugitive delegations > (Though they are kinda fun to keep around since they don't do anything), > and also note it may be a patent title, as the Herald is responsible for > tracking Patent Titles in eir monthly report, which got ratified to include > these delegations. A few years ago we gave all the "fugitives of the old law" a blot- equivalent, so that they would be fugitives of the current law too. Would it make sense to do something like that again? I like the theory that it might be a patent title – we'd have to look at the exact wording of the Herald's report to see if it might end up ratifying like that. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Another double resolution proposal
On Sun, 2024-08-11 at 16:36 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote: > I submit the following proposal: > [snip] > > * With T notice: that intent is ripe, was created at least T ago, e is a > sponsor of it. There's a missing "and" here. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: The Scroll of Agora
On Sun, 2024-08-04 at 14:06 +1000, Matt Smyth via agora-discussion wrote: > Can I ask what this part is, and how it is ratified? These are patent titles that are not Rules-defined (together with a few that are Rules-defined, but don't fall into any neat categories). The non-Rules-defined ones come about in three main ways: a) When someone is given a patent title, it stays even if the rule defining it gets repealed, so some of these were meaningful under previous rules; b) Sometimes we think it'd be a good idea to give someone a title, e.g. to celebrate something that they've done or just because they were well-enough-known or relevant enough that it seemed like they should have a title; c) Because patent titles stick around indefinitely unless something happens to remove them, it has been known for people to grant themselves patent titles using scams, in order to get a fun permanent reward. The patent titles don't actually do anything unless a rule says they do (although you can obtain a Violet Ribbon when you get the title – I think it used to be generally assumed that most active players would get one eventually), but they're a sort of interesting chart of Agora's history, because pretty much all the titles have a story behind them. It hasn't been unheard of for longer-time players to dredge up one of the stories from time to time. As for how it's ratified, IIRC the list doesn't self-ratify, but it's possible to ratify it manually (either Ratification Without Objection or via proposal). -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: help I have no idea what I'm doing (attn. Stonemason)
On Mon, 2024-07-29 at 22:25 +0100, Katherina Walshe-Grey via agora- business wrote: > I pay a fee of 6 Spendies to transfer the Minty Stone to myself. > > I pay a fee of 6 Spendies to transfer the Radiant Stone to myself. > > I pay a fee of 6 Spendies to transfer the Power Stone to myself. > > (Janet told me to do this, apparently it stops ais523 from winning > somehow?) Janet's actions on their own were already enough to stop me from winning, I think. E's basically just baited you into spending a lot of Spendies on stones for which I'd already exhausted the activations for the week (because I was aware that something like this might happen, I wanted to make the stones more valuable for me and less valuable for whoever took them). For what it's worth, I wasn't actively going for the win, although of course I would have taken it if everyone else had done nothing – just trying to make the best use of the Spendies I had, and noting that that happened to place me close to a win at the time. -- ais523
DIS: Re: ALT: [Promotor] Distribution of Propositions 9144-9147
On Sun, 2024-07-21 at 18:59 -0500, secretsnail wrote: > ID: 9145 > Title: Pragmatic quarters > Adoption Index: 2.0 > Author: Murphy > Co-authors: Mischief > > > Amend Rule 2555 (Blots) by replacing this text: > > At the beginning of each quarter, half (rounded down) of each > fugitive's blots are destroyed. > > with this text: > > Once a quarter, the Referee CAN and SHALL publish a Notice of > Clemency, upon which half (rounded down) of each fugitive's blots > are destroyed. This doesn't actually provide a mechanism for the Referee to do so (likewise with the other similar obligations in this proposal) – it just states that it's possible. (In particular, it gives no indication of what a Notice of Clemency is – just labelling a message as one probably wouldn't be enough, because the rules don't state that a message labelled as a Notice of Clemency actually *is* a Notice of Clemency.) What's our precedent on how to deal with this sort of obligation? -- ais523
DIS: Re: OFF: Re: BUS: (@Arbitor, @Tailor)
On Sun, 2024-07-07 at 14:09 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-official wrote: > snail wrote: > > > Do the awards, bozos > > Wins in 2023, based on comparing the Herald's reports of 2023-01-02 vs > 2024-01-27 (the latter of which mentions that there were no new patent > titles since Nov 2023): > > High Score: ais523, snail (x2), Yachay > Masonry: Murphy ("Gauntlet" awards were also moved here) > Rice: G. > Stamp Collecting: snail > Tournament: ais523 > Zen: ais523 > > I nominate ais523 and snail for Golden Glove 2023. Are Zen and Masonry different win categories? -- ais523
Re: DIS: Suggestions on the Absurd
On Tue, 2024-07-02 at 17:51 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora- discussion wrote: > Further gamification perhaps? > > Maybe "achievements" once we accomplish something peculiar with the > boulder, or the possibility to earn lootboxes with silly, pointless > prizes. Thinking about this: some sort of bonus to pushing the boulder to particular numbers (square numbers, for example) might be interesting and add some strategy to it. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Full Transparency (@Tailor)
On Mon, 2024-07-01 at 18:52 -0400, Mischief via agora-business wrote: > I qualify for a White Ribbon, as I have never previously owned one I was a little surprised by this one, so I checked: you had Orange and Blue ribbons in 2008, but not White. (Previous rulesets count.) -- ais523
DIS: Re: OFF: [proposal] It's about time
On Sun, 2024-06-30 at 11:34 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-official wrote: > 5. Any anniversary, monthly anniversary, or quarterly anniversary that > would otherwise occur on a day of the month that does not exist > (after considering any leap day) instead occurs on the following day. What's the day that follows a nonexistent day? You probably mean "instead occurs on the first day of the following month". -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (@Herald) Victory by Quickdraw
On Fri, 2024-06-28 at 11:20 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: > I believe that deals and alliances are going to be extremely strong here. > To me, it seems to be in practice a prerequisite to incarnating at all in > the first place. There is no downside (other than the rather problematic tracking burden, which is a SHOULD) to incarnating if you don't intend to win via Bangs yourself – it helps to block a win, and may produce Bangs which could potentially have value as trade items. If enough players incarnate, it'll make a win via pooling quite hard to achieve, because (under the current rules) the pool has to form at least half of the players who incarnate (and would have to be an even greater proportion if the cost to eliminate someone were increased). There's also an interesting sort of relationship in which the more players incarnate, the more valuable Bangs become (due to reduced supply: some players would be willing to sell Bangs very cheaply, but others will demand more, and with lots of players incarnated then deals will have to be made with the more demanding players). That means that even if a player would be willing to sell their Bangs cheaply, if lots of players are incarnated, it makes more economic sense to increase your price because you're still likely going to be within the top X players to buy from. And that in turn means that the price of buying a win is going to go up faster than linearly as more players incarnate. All this means that players should be encouraged to incarnate rather than discouraged: staying Ghostly only benefits players who are trying to pool for a win. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: (@Herald) Victory by Quickdraw
On Thu, 2024-06-27 at 21:34 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-business wrote: > I stand Alone. Now I'm trying to figure out how you could afford to bribe so many people (particularly along the lines of "are these bribes large, in which case you might not be able to pay for them, or small, in which case how did you persuade people to accept them?"). I think it's possible that there is some sort of win-trading going on (i.e. you bribed the players by planning to support future wins). In any case, this has demonstrated that a 1 Bang = 1 elimination ratio is probably not enough to handle high levels of trading – possibly players should start with half a Bang rather than a whole one. (Because the way you eliminate a player is, in effect, to transfer a Bang to them, there will always be enough to finish the game unless players start hoarding.) -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Bangs and such
On Thu, 2024-06-27 at 21:25 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-business wrote: > I eliminate ais523 by paying a fee of 1 bang. I have 2 Bangs for sale. Is anyone willing to make offers? -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [ADoP] Metareport
On Mon, 2024-06-24 at 11:50 +1000, Matt Smyth via agora-discussion wrote: > Query: This report lists my lateness as !!! - but Simplifior was only > enacted in the past 24 hrs, right? Am I misinterpreting something in > this report? My guess is that the report is automatically generated, and the automation hasn't taken this case into account. For what it's worth, I'm unsure on what our actual precedents are on "a player becomes an officer close to a deadline for the office", although generally players are reluctant to penalise new officers for duties that they didn't have a realistic chance to fulfil. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: [@ais523] CFJs 4084, 4085 [Re: BUS: CFJ - 4st/apathy name clarifications (@Arbitor)]
On Mon, 2024-05-27 at 12:59 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote: > On 5/27/24 12:53, nix via agora-business wrote: > > > I CFJ: "The CFJ above bars the player currently named 'apathy'" > > I number this CFJ 4085. I assign it to ais523. > > Gratuitous: This is trivially TRUE. Names have no legal meaning in > Agora, and plenty of case-law covers synonymous names. CFJ 4033, 3225 > (implicitly), 3467. Nothing stops anyone from referring to anybody by > any name or referent, as long as it's clear. Only reason I didn't assign > to myself was to follow the arbitor's requirement to give "reasonably > equal opportunities to judge". It isn't trivial – the statement doesn't match what the intent of the CFJ is. I agree that it's trivial that the player variously known as 4st/apathy is barred from the CFJ. However, the CFJ statement also (probably unintentionally) requires me to determine whether the player in question is currently named 'apathy', and I think that's less obvious – that's what I'm going to be spending the bulk of my thought judging on. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Referee] The Blotter (and a history lesson @Mischief)
On Sun, 2024-05-19 at 15:09 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-discussion wrote: > ais523 wrote: > > > particular, if a contract would be given a Rest (the equivalent of a > > Blot), every member of the contract would be given a Rest instead. > > > the Insulator (equivalent of today's Referee) was required to report > > the Fugitive status. > > For those wondering how "Rest" and "Insulator" fit together: the > primary currencies at the time were Notes, tracked by the Conductor, > whose author evidently had a shameless disregard for mixed metaphors. It was quite a well-constructed series of interlocking puns (starting with "Notes" = banknotes or musical notes; and if you did something helpful to Agora you would be noted for it). It is possible that some of these were fortunate coincidences rather than intentional. A Rest had a value of -1 Note (originally, you could use a Note to cancel out a Rest). I am surprised that puns on "ar-Rest-ed" weren't made more often. Incidentally, I vaguely remember that Notes and Ribbons were descendants of the same system (i.e. originally a Ribbons win was obtained via getting an ancestor-of-Notes from every possible source, with the ancestors of Notes having ribbon-style colors rather than musical pitches), although they had diverged somewhat before I started playing and no longer matched up to each other. That economy ended up being temporarily revived semi-recently under the Glitter system (which was effectively an economic reward for doing something that would give you a Ribbon). -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: [Proposal] An Agoran Standoff
On Tue, 2024-05-14 at 06:55 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-business wrote: > A ghostly player CAN incarnate by announcement, which means > to flip eir Vitality to Invulnerable, provided there are only > Invulnerable or Ghostly players. [snip] > When the match is reset, each player is set to Ghostly, all bangs are > destroyed, and then each player gains 1 bang. > > When 3 days have passed since the match is reset, all Invulnerable > players have eir Vitality set to Alive. The timing here is incredibly tight given Agora's typical pace of play – not only is it faster than the "once per week" cadence at which many players seem to be paying attention, it's even faster than the 4- day without-objection timer. This makes it likely that only players who are continuously paying attention will end up joining the match, and could arguably be considered a scam, or at least biased proposal-writing in favour of the continuously active. > Each corporeal player SHOULD list eir Vitality and Bang Balance in > all eir messages. This one is also a problem, seeing as it includes things like official reports (and even the SLR/FLR) – although some means is needed to track things, and I think officer-less subgames are an experiment worth trying, "every message" seems like too high a frequency for this. > Eliminating a player makes em Unalive, and then grants em 1 bang. The eliminated player has no obvious use for the granted bang, as it will be destroyed before they next become alive. Is this intended to give em something to trade with? -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Proposals (attn Promotor)
On Sun, 2024-05-12 at 15:32 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-business wrote: > Proposal: No apathetic apathy > > Amend Rule 2465 (Victory by Apathy) by appending this text: > > A player SHALL NOT announce intent to Declare Apathy and then > fail to Declare Apathy before that intent ceases to be ripe; such > failure is the Class 5 Infraction of Not Reading the Room. What's the intention behind this one (and why such a high class)? Is the intention to make failed Apathy attempts illegal? -- ais523
Re: DIS: Winpalooza
On Thu, 2024-05-09 at 09:11 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote: > On 5/6/24 15:15, 4st nomic via agora-discussion wrote: > > So ais523 has basically won 3 times, paradox, stones, and radiance, pretty > > much in a row. > > > > Just would like to point that out. > > A portion of this, at least the radiance portion, is because e's been > sitting on a large stockpile of stamps from before they had the value > they currently do. I wonder if we should do a one-time reduction in > stamp holdings, with enough warning for people to spend them before the > reduction happens. The large stockpile of ais523 stamps was fairly valuable back when I originally created it, too (and is not really enough for a win on its own; most of the Radiance I used for the win came from stamp trades in the intervening months). It's also been substantially crippling my gameplay ever since we switched to the new system – stamp creation is based on the number of stamps of your type that exist, so I haven't been able to create ais523 stamps since the system was enacted, meaning I've been locked out from a portion of gameplay. (It is worth contrasting with Yachay's stamps-into-radiance win, which was achieved fairly quickly by a new player soon after registering – because Yachay stamps were easy for em to create and valuable, e was able to trade for stamps that gave enough radiance to win, with no pre- existing asset stockpile to use.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: (@Herald, Illuminator, Collector, Stonemason) BUS: A hat-trick
On Tue, 2024-05-07 at 09:30 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: > Perhaps, I'm personally not too sure about it, although I haven't > participated in Radiance yet, myself. I think it's good to have the > different subgames have different levels of risk and gameplay style. We > already have Stamps (and Ribbons) for relatively riskless grinds. > > To toss out more ideas, perhaps the "winning" threshold could be reduced by > half, which award you 1 Radium, and you can cash in 2 Radium for a win. Or > the threshold is reduced by a third, and you need 3 Radium. > > I think having to race for Radiance is exciting. The problem is that it makes it impossible to use radiance to reward things like judging CFJs and holding offices (and writing good proposals) – if people are racing for Radiance that gives them an incentive to try to hold other players back from Radiance by, e.g., voting down their proposals. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Winpalooza
On Mon, 2024-05-06 at 13:15 -0700, 4st nomic via agora-discussion wrote: > So ais523 has basically won 3 times, paradox, stones, and radiance, > pretty much in a row. > > Just would like to point that out. The wins came together at around the same time, but the start of planning for them was quite separate. (For example, I'd been setting up for the radiance win for well over a year, whereas the paradox win was attempted almost as soon as I noticed it was possible and wasn't pre- planned.) A sequence of two unrelated wins by the same player in quick succession has definitely happened before. I can't remember having seen sequences of three unrelated wins in the past, though. -- ais523
DIS: Re: (@Herald, Illuminator, Collector, Stonemason) BUS: A hat-trick
On Mon, 2024-05-06 at 17:47 +0100, ais523 via agora-business wrote: > My radiance is 100. This announcement causes me to win the game. …which reminds me that the radiance reset is still broken. I have been wondering if it would make more sense to cap the value of the reset, i.e. if you have less than 40 Radiance you lose half your radiance, but if you have more, you only lose 20. That way, players wouldn't be punished for gradually working towards a win over time (in particular, the relative timing of two players winning would continue to matter, but wouldn't matter to nearly the same extent). I also think that doing that would help decouple radiance wins between the various players to a sufficient extent that we could at least use radiance as officer and judge pay (although probably not proposal pay). -- ais253
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: New week, new push (attn Absurdor)
On Sun, 2024-05-05 at 21:38 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora- discussion wrote: > It's crazy to me how they've made a whole video game based on an > Agoran subgame. BF Joust escaped its origins as an Agoran subgame and became something that received intermittent play for over seven years. I'm not sure whether or not it counts as a video game (but the submissions were moderated automatically by computer and we had visualisations for seeing how the various competing warriors did, so it's a video game in the sense of "a game played by interacting with a computer program that provides graphical feedback"). You can see https://esolangs.org/wiki/BF_Joust_strategies for some of the nonsense we came up with over the years. (The rules were slightly different from the original ruleset that was run at Agora - the "flag zero" victory condition was changed to require the flag to be at two cycles rather than one, the tape was made shorter, and a command was added to wait for one cycle. Competitions also started to be run continuously, rather than in weekly batches, and with a draw being counted as a draw rather than a double loss. But most of the rules are still the same as in the Agoran original.) For those who weren't active in 2008, here's how it looked at Agora: https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-business@agoranomic.org/msg10766.html -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement of CFJs 4075 and 4076
On Tue, 2024-04-30 at 09:52 -0700, 4st nomic via agora-discussion wrote: > I object. > Per Rule 2576 "Ownership", the asset goes into abeyance as soon as the > owner is ambiguous. > The owner becomes ambiguous at step 2, wherein we are not sure if ais523 > can take the asset due to the ensuing contradiction. > Therefore, both CFJs should be FALSE, as neither party can cash a promise > that is in abeyance. This argument assumes that the paradox has already occurred – if there were no paradox there would be no ambiguity. So this is a self- defeating line of reasoning: you're saying that the first transfer causes the promise's ownership to be ambiguous because it would cause a paradox, then that the second transfer unambiguously fails because the first transfer moved the promise to the L&FD – or in other words, this is an argument that says "if there were a paradox, that would cause there to not be a paradox". This doesn't lead to a consistent outcome because it requires a view of things in which the paradox both does and doesn't occur; it's just as self-contradictory as the scenarios in which the first transfer fails and in which the first transfer succeeds. (Or to think about it another way, Murphy has proved that if there were not a paradox, there would be a paradox, and you are arguing that if there were a paradox there would not be a paradox, and thus we have constructed a paradox as to whether there's a paradox!) -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Judgement of CFJs 4075 and 4076
On Sun, 2024-04-28 at 15:38 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-business wrote: > I was looking for (but couldn't find) one or two other cases that G. was > involved in, along the lines of: > > * A player plays card X which gives em card Y, then plays card Y > which retroactively negates eir playing card X CFJ 1563 (was DISMISSed, apparently because no paradox judgement existed in the ruleset at the time). > * The Arbitor (maybe named CotC at the time) ambiguously assigns a > CFJ to either X or Y, both of whom would be in a position where eir > judgement would imply that the other one was assigned the CFJ I wasn't able to find this one, although I think it happened before I first registered. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Self-Promotion
On Sun, 2024-04-21 at 15:16 +1000, Matt Smyth via agora-discussion wrote: > Good something to you all, > Is there a circumstance where the Promoter is allowed to promote > themselves > to some role, or when (rarely) creating a new role, do we assume the > Promoter cannot do this self-despotism? Normally, when a new office is created, it's given to the author of the proposal (rule 1006). The Promotor's job is to distribute proposals; it's the Assessor who actually resolves them. As such, the office of Promotor has very little impact on the way players are allocated to offices. (The Promotor might end up in a new office when a proposal is resolved, if e happened to be the author of the proposal, but that would be unrelated to eir status as Promotor.) The officer who tracks offices is the ADoP. E does have a small advantage when it comes to gaining offices, because the vote collector for an election has the ability to break ties (rule 955). In any case, it's more common for Agora to struggle with finding anyone who has the time/motivation/ability to run an office than it is for it to struggle with people fighting over who should get the office. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Civic Duty (Absurdor)
On Sat, 2024-04-13 at 22:11 -0400, Quadrantal via agora-business wrote: > I push þe boulder. > > -- > > The above message shall be read, to the fullest extent possible, as if > it was sent with the digraph "th" in place of all occurrences of the > character thorn ("þ"), and such digraphs were capitalized equivalently. > > Quadrantal Isn't that "th" actually a ð rather than a þ? Admittedly they were pretty much used interchangeably in Old English (and ð ended up dying out even before þ did, and before the distinction was commonly made), but when writing the "th" sounds using historical letters, it makes sense to give the two different sounds two different letters. (IPA confuses the matter by using ð and θ for the two sounds, rather than ð and þ, but the latter pair were both historically used for "th" sounds in English and are rather easier to type.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: CFJs 4075 & 4076 Assigned to kiako [Re: BUS: (@Notary, Arbitor) A Broken Promise]
On Wed, 2024-04-10 at 09:17 -0500, Kiako via agora-discussion wrote: > ARGUMENTS FOR [X] > > i. We again suppose (D) succeeds. Then one of (A) or (C) succeeds. > ii. (B) fails, to avoid a paradox/indeterminacy. > iii. (A) fails, because (A) implies (B), and (B) must fail. > iv. (C) succeeds, because (A) fails and (D) succeeds. At least this argument is explicitly disallowed by the rules. From rule 217: Definitions and prescriptions in the rules are only to be applied using direct, forward reasoning; in particular, an absurdity that can be concluded from the assumption that a statement about rule-defined concepts is false does not constitute proof that it is true. which implies that you can't validly use step "ii." above in order to try to resolve the situation. (This was added to the rules intentionally in order to stop scams of the form "if I don't have a dictatorship, there is a paradox, therefore I have a dictatorship" – if someone sets up such a situation, the correct/intended resolution is that there is a paradox and no dictatorship.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Referee] Infraction Reaction
On Mon, 2024-04-08 at 11:21 -0300, juan via agora-discussion wrote: > 4st nomic via agora-discussion [2024-04-05 19:16]: > > What does take complete control of Agora mean? > > > > Is any statement that is simply "not true" sufficient? > > > > Overall I find this to be unsavory. > > Yeah, rules be rules, but jokes shouldn't be punishable. Could we > improve things? The easy way to avoid the punishment would be to send the joke to DIS: rather than BUS:, where it would likely have been pretty much as effective. (And I don't think I agree with the principle of "jokes shouldn't be punishable" in the general case, as opposed to this case specifically - if someone does something that hurts other people, it shouldn't matter whether it was a joke or not, because the effect on the victim is more important than the intentions of the culprit.) -- ais523 Referee
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Referee] Infraction Reaction
On Fri, 2024-04-05 at 19:16 -0700, 4st nomic via agora-discussion wrote: > What does take complete control of Agora mean? > > Is any statement that is simply "not true" sufficient? If the statement is meaningless, then it is not true. To what extent it is meaningful, it is incorrect. (It is also worth noting that whatever you think of the first paragraph, the second paragraph, "Full explanation here:", is clearly both meaningful and false.) Being not true is not on its own sufficient for an infraction: the author also has to have believed it not to be true (or in a situation where they should have known it was not true), and to have either made it with intent to mislead, or under penalty of No Faking. Most messages sent to Agora aren't made with intent to mislead, even if they may be mistaken sometimes (and "under penalty of No Faking" is rarely used). This one was a bit unusual in that respect. -- ais523
DIS: (@Janet) Re: BUS: [Arbitor] Judgment Reminder @Kate @Janet @Murphy @Gaelan
On Sat, 2024-03-16 at 16:23 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote: Janet, you've just sent two blank messages in a row – has something gone wrong with your email client? -- ais523
DIS: Re: (@arbitor, @referee) Re: BUS: A lie
On Tue, 2024-03-12 at 14:29 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote: > Or, in the alternative, based on the authority Rule 2125, Rule 2471 > prohibits sending a message with certain attributes, and that is what > the infraction is. So, the infraction isn't contained within the message > in any case. Thus, even if all infractions are judged to be game > actions, whether or not sending the message was an infraction has no > bearing on whether the message *contained* a game action. So, the > message does not contain any game actions and the statement is FALSE. Something I'm confused about (and which is relevant to me because I need to make a ruling as Referee): I think it's undisputed that rule 2125 allows the rules to prohibit the sending of messages even if doing so is not an action (it says that very explicitly). However, it is less clear whether rule 2471 actually makes use of that permission; it says "A person SHALL NOT make a public statement that is a lie.", and "SHALL NOT" is defined (by rule 2152) as "Performing the described action violates the rule in question." If rule 2471 is therefore read as "It is a violation of this rule to perform the action of making a public statement that is a lie", it therefore matters whether or not the making of the statement is an action, because rule 2471 criminalises only statements that are actions, not statements that are not actions. For what it's worth, I'm currently leaning (based on the above expansion) towards a reading in which rule 2471 defines lying to be an unregulated action that is nonetheless a rules violation (rule 2125 states that the rules cannot proscribe unregulated actions, except for the sending of public messages, so this is not a violation of rule 2125). But I'd be interested in feedback from other players in this respect. -- ais523 Referee
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Arbitor] New Arbitor in Town @kiako @Kate @Yachay @ais523 @Janet @Murphy
On Sun, 2024-03-10 at 18:01 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-discussion wrote: > from Rule 2481 (Festival Restrictions) Power 3.1: > > { > While Agora's Festivity is nonzero, the following apply: > ... > > 2. Quorum for Agoran Decisions is equal to half the number of > Festive players, rounded up; > > } > > Quorum was 1 if Festivity was 5, since Kate would be the only Festive > player. Except! I think that the underlying problem/bug here is "the Festivity mechanism is intended to ensure that there are always at least 5 Festive players during a Festival, and the Festivity rules assume that; but if Festivity is set via a mechanism other than that in rule 2480, it is possible to end up with fewer Festive players than that". Presumably the fix is to add a failsafe that platonically turns off some of the Festival restrictions if there are insufficiently many Festive players (either directly or by platonically changing the Festivity back down). -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [Arbitor] New Arbitor in Town @kiako @Kate @Yachay @ais523 @Janet @Murphy
On Sun, 2024-03-10 at 15:38 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-discussion wrote: > If so, and if Kate indeed gained five Ribbons on 2023-08-31, and no > one else gained as many, then: > * Only Kate's vote counted on any proposal resolved after 230. > * Only Kate's support counted on any tabled action resolved after > 230. > which should have been enough for eir dictatorship to become > effective. What was quorum? If it ever got low enough for that to work, then there is something badly broken with the quorum rules and we need to revise them. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Registering
On Sun, 2024-03-10 at 12:46 -0700, Edward Murphy via agora-discussion wrote: > Aris wrote: > > > Erm... that CFJ doesn't do what you want it to. CFJs are supposed to be > > statements, not questions, and interpreting something out of context is > > different from interpreting it in context. > > At one point we did legislate that, for CFJs asking yes/no questions, a > judgement of TRUE/FALSE is appropriate if the answer is yes/no > (respectively). Is it worth bringing that back? I suspect that it isn't – this doesn't happen often enough to make it worth the additional rules complexity, and the consequences of getting it wrong are pretty small/minor and easily fixed. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Covering bases
On Tue, 2024-03-05 at 14:36 -0600, nix via agora-discussion wrote: > On 3/5/24 14:24, Rowan Evans via agora-business wrote: > > After that: If I have granted myself a welcome package 52 times AND > > not granted Murphy 2.4, then 2.4 times, I grant Murphy a welcome > > package. > > This still fails, you can't do something a fractional amount, so the > specification of what you're doing is too unclear. I guess this is yet another example of the "I say I do, therefore I do" fallacy, which has plagued Agora for a long time. Just saying you perform an action doesn't actually perform it unless there's a rule that causes that statement to have an effect; when I make a statement like "I wield the Radiance Stone", the statement doesn't directly do anything, and the Radiance Stone only gets wielded because rule 2641 triggers as a consequence of the announcement and changes the gamestate (due to the definition of "by announcement" in rule 478). For something that isn't rules-defined, like taking an action a fractional number of times, there's no way to trigger the relevant rule because there isn't one. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Registering
On Tue, 2024-03-05 at 15:45 +, Gaelan Steele via agora-discussion wrote: > On Mar 5, 2024, at 4:37 AM, Aris via agora-business > wrote: > > > > Erm... that CFJ doesn't do what you want it to. CFJs are supposed to be > > statements, not questions, and interpreting something out of context is > > different from interpreting it in context. > > Without commenting on the rest of the situation (I haven’t looked into > it), we have precedent that CFJs phrased as questions are fair game; see > CFJ 3505. Well, the precedent of CFJ 3505 also states that CFJ 3505 was never validly judged, although the CFJ record seems to ignore that. (FWIW, I disagree and think that that part of the judgement was given validly, but is wrong.) -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: 𐑕𐑑𐑦𐑤 𐑦𐑯𐑜𐑤𐑦𐑖 (𐑯𐑴𐑚𐑩𐑛𐑰 𐑒𐑨𐑯 𐑕𐑑𐑪𐑐 𐑥𐑰)
On Mon, 2024-03-04 at 13:48 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote: > Transliterated from the Shavian alphabet to standard English: > > { > Hello Agora, > I declare victory by apathy for Ben and Goren. To object, write "I > object to victory by apathy" > > Goodbye Agora > } > > This wasn't reasonable effort, by our precedents, almost surely does > nothing. In any case, can you point to any prior intent made? I suspect this was (intended to be) the intent, rather than the actual action, despite the wording forgetting to use the word "intend". -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: 𐑕𐑑𐑦𐑤 𐑦𐑯𐑜𐑤𐑦𐑖 (𐑯𐑴𐑚𐑩𐑛𐑰 𐑒𐑨𐑯 𐑕𐑑𐑪𐑐 𐑥𐑰)
On Mon, 2024-03-04 at 18:19 +, Goren Barak via agora-business wrote: > 𐑣𐑧𐑤𐑴 𐑩𐑜𐑹𐑩, > 𐑲 𐑛𐑧𐑒𐑤𐑺 𐑝𐑦𐑒𐑑𐑹𐑰 𐑚𐑲 𐑨𐑐𐑩𐑔𐑰 𐑓 ·𐑚𐑧𐑯 𐑯 ·𐑜𐑹𐑧𐑯 > 𐑑 𐑳𐑚𐑡𐑧𐑒𐑑, 𐑮𐑲𐑑 "𐑲 𐑳𐑚𐑡𐑧𐑒𐑑 𐑑 𐑝𐑦𐑒𐑑𐑹𐑰 𐑚𐑲 > 𐑨𐑐𐑩𐑔𐑰" > > 𐑜𐑫𐑛𐑚𐑲 𐑩𐑜𐑹𐑩 I haven't even tried to translate this yet, but my immediate reaction was that, based on contents and on there apparently being a double- quoted statement, it at least contains an attempt to call a CFJ. (Posting this now in case it ends up being relevant for evidence.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: (@Stonemason, Illuminator) BUS: Re: OFF: [Stonemason] Billboard Rock Chart - 4 Mar 2024
On Mon, 2024-03-04 at 00:57 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-discussion wrote: > On 3/4/24 00:48, ais523 via agora-business wrote: > > > > I wield the Anti-Equatorial Stone, specifying the Recursion Stone (the > > Power Stone is protected). > > I wield the Recursion Stone as the Protection Stone, specifying the > > Recursion Stone. > > Rude. There were only two valid targets, and the Blank Stone isn't very useful. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (@Promotor) Proposal - Agora of Empires
On Sun, 2024-03-03 at 11:45 +0100, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora- discussion wrote: > > This *really* seems like an infinite free win generation machine. At the > > *very* least there should be some cooldown between wins (I'd argue for a > > global 30 day cooldown at minimum) > > > > I'm flattered that my incompetence is mistaken for some kind of plot. The > suggestion seems good and easy to implement to me. I guess this is worth expressing in a different way – even if it isn't intended as an infinite free win generation machine, it is very likely that at least one (and probably several) Agorans will attempt to use it as one, because there aren't sufficient safeguards to prevent it being used as one. So your proposal is unlikely to lead to the sort of gameplay that you apparently expect it to. A historical point of view: one of my favourite scams from the past of Agora happened when someone suggested a similarly well-intentioned contest that nonetheless had loopholes which made it very easy for a small group of players to use it to win immediately. The scam wasn't against the contest itself (which was quickly recognised by Agorans as a whole to have insufficient safeguards against an immediate win), but rather against the dependent/tabled actions system, with a group of conspirators (including me) managing to get a without-3-objections to occur and create the contest even though the rest of Agora thought that, as there had been 3 objections already, the contest creation attempt had failed. (At the time there were no restrictions on how quickly a dependent action could be taken after an objection was withdrawn, so we simply just made the objections ourself, and withdrew them when it was time to scam the win. Nowadays, that doesn't work: rule 2124 imposes a 24-hour delay.) -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Geologist] shiny stuff
On Sun, 2024-02-25 at 13:41 -0800, Edward Murphy via agora-business wrote: > 4st wrote: > > > The Geologist isn't real, and there are no crystals. If they do exist, it > > would look like this: > > Geologist Weekly: > > Snail owns Crystal 2463 with size 2. > > Snail owns Crystal 2659 with size 2. > > Snail owns Crystal 2451 with size 2. > > > > Murphy owns Crystal 2642 with size 2. > > > > 4st owns Crystal 2685, with size 1. > > 4st owns Crystal 1607, with size 3. > > 4st owns Crystal 106, with size 3. > > > > Janet owns Crystal 869, with size 3. > > Janet owns Crystal 2201, with size 3. > > > > Per the 18th February SLR, 133 rules are enacted. > > > > Changes: > > None. > > This is a Claim of Error, just to ensure that this quasi-report doesn't > self-ratify. (I'm pretty sure it wouldn't anyway, because it doesn't > purport to be the Geologist's report; instead, it purports that no such > office or report exists, then provides explicitly hypothetical data for > what it would look like if it did.) It isn't a (valid) Claim of Error: those have to "explain[] the scope and nature of a perceived error" and you didn't. (Also, making a claim of error is an action by announcement nowadays: so I suspect this also failed on the grounds of "you didn't say you were making a claim of error, you just stated that the message was a claim of error".) -- ais523
Re: DIS: ranting about potential ruleset issue
On Mon, 2024-02-19 at 10:43 -0800, 4st nomic via agora-discussion wrote: > fwiw, I plan to vote AGAINST any attempt to ratify the ruleset as the > ruleset is currently as if we had been playing "correctly" this whole time. > > As it currently stands, a vote FOR would be a vote to maintain the status > quo that got the ruleset into its current predicament. > The status quo is very platonic, and I don't want it to be. However, that's > an old debate: > https://agoranomic.org/Herald/theses/html/-XX-XX-Vanyel.html I actually see ratification as a compromise between the pragmatists and platonists – it's a way to allow both sides to agree on the gamestate. Generally speaking, ratifications are to the advantage of pragmatists because, whilst changing nothing from the pragmatic point of view, they cause the platonic point of view to start agreeing with it. So a vote FOR a ratification (assuming it's being done correctly) basically means "sure, I'm happy to accept the gamestate we're currently playing in". A vote AGAINST only really makes sense if you think that either something is wrong with the process of ratification, or with the gamestate being ratified; or if you actively *want* platonists to disagree with you about what the ruleset is. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposals 9053-9057 [attn. Arbitor]
On Sun, 2024-02-11 at 15:36 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote: > *sigh* here we go again > > I CFJ, barring Maloney: "Proposal 9055, as part of its effect, > enacted a rule." I think the more interesting question is whether it enacted a regulation (which has a lower standard): the rule vs. regulation ambiguity might potentially have been resolved via the imprecision of the specification. That said, there's also ambiguity around who the Promulgator would be, which might tip the balance there into "the proposal is trying to enact a rule". -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Stone actions [attn. Stonemason]
On Sun, 2024-01-07 at 02:31 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote: > I wield the Recursion Stone as the Power Stone, specifying the > Recursion Stone. This isn't a valid specification: the Recursion Stone is not a player. I am not sure whether it fails outright, or whether it defaults to specifying you. (Also, due to the way the rules are worded: does the affected player become Power Stoned or Recursion Stoned?) -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Registration restrictions
On Fri, 2024-01-05 at 01:40 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote: > * Inserting the following paragraph after the paragraph: > > { > > The basis of a person is the set of all persons that are (recursively) > part of em, in addition to emself. Rules to the contrary > notwithstanding, a person CANNOT become Registered if eir basis overlaps > with that of any current player > > } I suspect this won't have the effect you want on the rule, because you didn't specify which paragraph to insert it after. (There's also a missing full stop.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Propositions 9046-9048
On Sun, 2023-12-17 at 13:05 -0800, Edward Murphy via agora-discussion wrote: > Recommendation: As you suggested on Discord, have the Assessor > explicitly announce the things being attested. Then submit a new > proposal to fix the rule bug. I'm not convinced that actually works – it seems more like a scam than anything else, and that sort of scam has a historical tendency to not work correctly. This sort of thing does at least tend to win the rule 217 "best interests of the game" test though! -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Yes we can lift
On Sun, 2023-11-26 at 16:52 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote: > On 11/26/23 16:52, Agora amdw42 via agora-business wrote: > > I, Ben, push the boulder > > This fails, as you are not a player. You need to register first, e.g. by > sending "I register as a player" to agora-business. This sort of thing has become very common recently, possibly due to confusion between "register for the mailing lists" and "register as a player". I wonder if it'd be possible to reduce the confusion with, say, updates to the website? -- ais523
(@Promotor) DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 9032-9034
On Fri, 2023-11-24 at 03:26 +, ais523 via agora-business wrote: > I vote as follows: > > > 9033* 4st, Janet, nix, snail 3.0 It's been 4 years, Agora. 4 > > YEARS. > AGAINST. I will explain why to a-d. So there was a minor mistake in the recent dictatorship scam attempt, which I pointed out as part of a counterscam attempt. It is possible/probable that the distribution of this proposal (and all proposals recently) contained the same mistake; and it is also possible that me pointing out the mistake to counterscam the dictatorship also invalidated this decision. I don't want there to be ambiguity about whether or not a ruleset ratification succeeded, especially because those things have to be written to work under as many potential versions of the rules as possible. As such, I'm voting against the decision for reasons related to the decision, rather than reasons related to the proposal to which it pertains. I encourage the authors/Promotor to try again, with a more carefully worded distribution message. (This message was sent to DIS: because it might otherwise potentially be a claim of error, under some past rulesets; sending it to a-d removes any risk of that, and I'd rather avoid any additional sources of ambiguity.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Proto: A new economy
On Sun, 2023-11-19 at 03:57 -0500, Janet Cobb via agora-discussion wrote: > On 11/19/23 03:55, 4st nomic via agora-discussion wrote: > > Fwiw I don't mind incentivizing change nor more blots. If what it takes to > > win becomes being a super goodie two shoes so be it > > The last time we incentivized finger-pointing for personal economic gain > we had a long-term player FAGE. This is not something we should be > trying to repeat. This isn't intended to incentivize finger-pointing – there is no reward for being the person who notes an infraction, only a penalty for the person who infracted. Do you think that people would be sufficiently anxious to try to slightly impede the leader that it would become a problem? -- ais523
DIS: Proto: A new economy
fect and enacts, repeals, or changes a substantive aspect of at least one rule, the Rulekeepor CAN once by announcement, and SHALL in a timely fashion, grant 4 Change Gems to its author. ["Disinterested" originally undefined but we can add it back into the rules if people start voting down bugfixes despite the Democracy Gem.] * Gardening Gem (Stonemason): As part of eir weekly duties, the Stonemason SHALL, and CAN by announcement, grant 3 Gardening Gems to each player who reached for a stone during the previous week. * Achievement Gem (Tailor): Whenever one of a player's Ribbon Ownership switches flips from False to True, the Tailor CAN once by announcement, and SHALL within one month, award that player 9 Achievement Gems. When performing a duty to grant gems, an officer SHALL specify how many gems are gained by each player who gains gems. If this rule would require an officer to grant a player 0 Gems, this requirement is ignored and the officer NEED NOT perform (or attempt to perform) it. The Gem Market The following Purchase Packs exist: * A Power Pack. A player's voting strength on an ordinary proposal is increased by 2 if e bought a Power Pack during the preceding month. [This could do with being tracked somehow – unclear what the best way to track this is. The Assessor currently has to mention it when resolving proposals; is that enough?] * A Stamp Pack. When a player buys a Stamp Pack, e is granted 5 Stamps of eir own type. * A Forgiveness Pack. A player who has bought a Forgiveness Pack during the current month CAN revoke a blot from any player (including emself) by announcement, subject to the restriction that no player can perform this action by this mechanism more than 6 times per month. The Referee's weekly report contains a list of players who have bought Forgiveness Packs in the current month, and the number of times that those players can still perform this action this month. * A Small Victory Pack. When a player buys a Small Victory Pack, e is granted 1 Score Star. * A Large Victory Pack. When a player buys a Large Victory Pack, e is granted 2 Score Stars. Pack Price is an Purchase Pack switch, tracked by the Jeweller, whose possible values are "unavailable" (the default) and all lists of (Gem type, positive integer) pairs. In a timely fashion after the start of each month, the Jeweller SHALL, and CAN by announcement, flip the Pack Price of each Purchase Pack to [(A, 12), (B, 10), (C, 8), (D, 6)] (where, for each Purchase Pack, A, B, C, D are types of Gem, chosen randomly subject to the restriction that the same type of Gem is not chosen twice for any given Purchase Pack; the same type of Gem can however be chosen for two different Purchase Packs). Upon doing so, for each type of Gem, 1 Gem of that type is revoked from each entity who owns at least one Gem of that type. Each player CAN buy a Purchase Pack that is not unavailable by spending, for each (Gem type, integer) pair in its Pack Price, that many gems of that type, subject to the restriction that no player CAN buy any given Purchase Pack if e has already bought that Purchase Pack that month. (For example, if a Purchase Pack's Pack Price is [(Idea, 1), (Clean, 2)], a player CAN buy that Purchase Pack by spending 1 Idea Gem and 2 Clean Gems, unless e has already done so that month.) Score Stars Score Stars are type of a fixed asset, tracked by the Jeweller. Ownership of Score Stars is restricted to players. If a player has more Score Stars than any other player, and the Boulder's Height is 50 or more, that player CAN Score eir Stars by announcement. This causes that person to win the game. When a player wins the game by doing so, all Score Stars are destroyed and the Boulder's Height is set to 0. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: (@Rulekeepor) cleaning
On Fri, 2023-11-17 at 16:21 -0800, 4st nomic via agora-business wrote: > I intend to clean rule 2480 ("Festivals") by replacing > "grater" with "greater". For the intent to work, you need to specify the mechanism, e.g. "I intend without objection to clean…" -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Registrar] Monthly report: Arrivals and Departures
On Wed, 2023-11-08 at 20:22 -0800, 4st nomic via agora-business wrote: > if it helps, I think the following groups constitute the same person > (not player): Several of these (most of these?) are wrong – they are mixing up natural persons and legal constructs. For example, the AFO was an artificial person who multiple players could cause to act by announcement. The exact membership changed over time; I know at one point I was able to send messages as the AFO. Saying that, e.g., Murphy and the AFO are the same person makes about much sense as saynig that I and the AFO are the same person. Agora currently doesn't (as far as I know) have players who aren't natural persons, but it was very common in the past and is responsible for a lot of the apparently duplicated email addresses. Through most (but not all) of Agora's history, there was a rule that at least two natural persons had to be involved with each of the artificial persons, so most of the artificial persons had multiple natural persons controlling them. (There are some exceptions, dating from rulesets that allowed single-person control of an artifical person, e.g. Slave Golems.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Poll on email address obfuscation on reports
On Mon, 2023-11-06 at 12:43 -0300, juan via agora-discussion wrote: > Hello y'all, > > Here are some questions for you: > > - Do you want your address to be obfuscated? > - Do you want every address to be obfuscated? > - Do you want the obfuscation to be uniform? > - Do you think each player should get to choose? > > Please elaborate! And, if you wish, send the message privately. I think that not doing the obfuscating ourself is likely to hide the addresses better than doing it would (and thus is a strict improvement, because the unobfuscated addresses are also more convenient to use). Spambots are unlikely to be subscribed to the Agoran mailing lists, so they would only be able to see a Registrar report via the archives. The archive on agoranomic.org requires logging in, so they can't see that one. As for the mail-archive.com archive, this is how a Registrar report looks there: <https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-official@agoranomic.org/msg13569.html> The addresses spelled with "@" are detected as email addresses and obfuscated by the archiving site. The addresses spelled with "at" aren't, and thus are left open (and obfuscation with "at" is something that many spambots will be able to understand). -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Propositions 9020-9026
On Sun, 2023-11-05 at 15:42 -0800, Edward Murphy via agora-business wrote: > > 9026~ Janet, Kate 1.5 It's a bit dark in here > endorse Herald The office of Herald is vacant; you may want to add a default for if there is no Herald when the proposal is resolved. (For what it's worth, I think that it might be easier to get a Herald if the office were split into two, thus my FOR vote.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Propositions 9011-9019
On Fri, 2023-10-20 at 17:18 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-discussion wrote: > This seems about the same as changing a rule by saying "Add the following > sentence: Things are a currency. Things are tracked by the Thinger." Which > would fail to do anything because "any ambiguity" is present (I think this > has been held before). There's the same ambiguity here. Do you have a reference? I agree that the cases are comparable, but think that both are unambiguous. Compare "Add the following sentence: Things are a currency. Then retitle the rule to 'Things'." I would consider that to be unambiguous, and yet it isn't any grammatically different from your example. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Propositions 9011-9019
On Fri, 2023-10-20 at 16:37 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-business wrote: > I deny this CoE. The proposals were not submitted. You said "I submit the > following 3 proposals" and proceeded to list 4 proposals, so the action was > not clearly and unambiguously specified as required for by-announcement > actions. Doesn't "following 3" unambiguously specify the next 3 proposals to appear in the message? The main ambiguity is as to whether the fourth proposal was also submitted via specifying it in the message, without a speech action specifically saying so. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: (@Notary) Re: BUS: A promise for a promise, a stamp for a stamp
On Wed, 2023-10-11 at 15:31 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote: > On 10/11/23 15:30, Kiako via agora-business wrote: > > On 10/11/2023 2:29 PM, Kiako via agora-discussion wrote: > > > I transfer one kiako stamp to ais523. > > > > > > > I grant kiako the following promise: > > > > {{{ > > > > Cashing condition: kiako has transferred a kiako stamp to > > > > ais523 in > > > > the message in which this promise is cashed. > > > > Expiry condition: It is 14 October 2023 or later. > > > > > > > > I transfer a Madrid stamp to kiako. > > > > }}} > > > I cash the above promise granted to me. > > > > TTttPF > > This fails. The cashing condition was not satisfied. I think it succeeded – there's a transfer before the innermost quote. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Stone Actions - 27 Aug 2023 [attn. Stonemason, Collector]
On Sun, 2023-08-27 at 20:01 +0100, Katherina Walshe-Grey via agora-discussion wrote: > On 27/08/2023 19:59, Katherina Walshe-Grey via agora-business wrote: > > On 27/08/2023 19:57, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote: > > > Oops. This reach fails, I already got the Hot Potato Stone last week. > > > > > > I wield the Hot Potato Stone, specifying Kate. > > > > > > I reach for the Anti-Equatorial Stone. > > > > Aww. Thank you! > > > > In that case, I reach for the Hot Potato stone myself. > > Wait no I just looked at the rule and the Hot Potato stone doesn't do > what I thought it does I recommend wielding it rather than reaching for it. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4034 Assigned to ais523
On Sun, 2023-06-04 at 17:42 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote: > On Sun, Jun 4, 2023 at 5:04 PM ais523 via agora-business > wrote: > > It's also worth noting that G. explicitly stated in eir message that e > > consented to the Rice Plan – the subsequent withdrawal was sent in the > > same message. Although Agora assumes that multiple actions listed in > > the same message happen one after another, this isn't something that > > can be true of a player's state of mind, because the entire message is > > sent at a single point in time; if the player had changed eir mind and > > no longer consented, e would just not send the email, or edit it before > > sending. > > I disagree with this rather strongly with this statement, given the > Agoran strong assumption of sequential actions within a message. It's > perfectly possible for a person to say "I consent to this at this > stage of the message, then I do some stuff, then I withdraw my consent > at the end of the message [after stuff is done]." That's really very > standard practice, and it is possible to have that sort of consent > process in one's mind when hitting 'send'. But a Rice Plan is resolved at the end of the week. There is no purpose for which consenting to it at some points in a message, and not at others, would be meaningful. It's possible to consent to an action occurring during particular parts of a message, but not during other parts (i.e. the state of consent is continuous, but the scope of consent is limited to particular points within a message). However, it is meaningless for you to natural- language consent, during some parts of a message but not other parts, to an action occurring at a particular point in time (i.e. the scope of the consent is continuous, but whether the consent is present or not varies over the course of the message); such a thing would necessarily be a legal fiction because that's not what natural-language consent is. It would only be possible if Agora managed to define consent to mean something other than what it actually means in natural language. It is reasonable to argue that Agora has actually done this (rule 2519), but my judgement was considering the two cases separately (i.e. consent-as-legal-fiction versus consent-as-state-of-mind), and the paragraph you quoted was about determining what the message meant under the consent-as-state-of-mind interpretation. I agree that it's possible for the legal fiction to vary within a single message. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: [Proposal] The Button
On Fri, 2023-06-02 at 14:18 -0300, Juan F. Meleiro via agora-business wrote: > I create the following proposal, entitled “Game Theory”: > > { > Create a Power 1.0 rule called “The Button” with text: This isn't really game theory, but "who has the most reliable Internet connection / is best at being online at the right time of day". The optimal play is to press the button 144 hours after a previous press, unless someone else does so first. In practice, the "unless someone else does so first" is going to be impossible to check for due to email communication delay, so we're going to have to come up with some rule to decide who pressed the send button first (which is likely to be practically impossible to determine, given the 1 second granularity of most email servers' timestamping – if two people seriously try for this then their emails will have the same timestamps on them). It would be possible to attempt to ruin other people's attempts to win by sending an email just before the 144-hour limit, but doing so would give up on your own chance to win, so it doesn't really make much sense (and you won't know whose attempts you are trying to ruin, because nothing's forcing players to try to win 144 hours after the *first* press – waiting for the later ones is just as good as winning at aiming for an earlier one). "Be awake at a specific time of day, chosen by the Assessor" is also the sort of gameplay that can unfairly disadvantage some players compared to others (depending on where they live compared to the Assessor's timezone, and/or at what times of day they are busy and thus unable to send email). Incidentally, the original Button that this was referencing had, IIRC, a 1.5-second grace period, which would remove the simultaneous-timing issues but lead to the win condition probably being too easy (especially if the grace period were scaled up to "1.5/60th of a week" rather than being left at its original length). -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: (@Herald) Keeping up with the Agorans
On Thu, 2023-05-25 at 17:00 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-business wrote: > As annoying as it is, it seems perfectly legal to do, to me. > > I create and submit the following Proposal: > > Title: Go Home, You're Drunk > AI: 3 > Author: Yachay > Co-Authors: None > // Comment: This is a hotfix to the still-open issue of ais' Dancing Around > the Town Fountain scam. > // Comment: Retroactive changes are secured at Power 3, hence the AI of 3. > > Retroactively make it so that this rule has been in effect since this > Proposal was created. That's a proposal, not a rule, so "this rule" has no referent. I think you may have omitted some of the proposal. Besides, this sort of thing is usually unnecessary: if we decide collectively that it's best to stop people repeating scams, and people do it anyway, we can wait for the loophole to be fixed and then reverse any "excess" abuses of it by proposal at that point (which is simpler and less confusing then trying to make retroactive changes, and also can usually be done with less than 3 power so is more likely to pass). -- ais523
Re: DIS: (Proto) Raybots
On Sun, 2023-05-21 at 13:13 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote: > On Sun, May 21, 2023 at 1:01 PM ais523 via agora-discussion > wrote: > > We've had artificial persons in the past, and they ceased to exist with > > no real issues. That predated Promises, which probably need a fix to > > cease to exist when their creator does. > > When you say "no real issues", IIRC we had to think really carefully > about things like rights, and repeal parts of R101 guaranteeing rights > to persons before we "destroyed" artificial persons, then put it back. > Someone might make a slight case that "Persons" are the core of the > game in the current R101 (though that's really a stretch) and > interestingly, reading the rule on Banning, we could probably Ban > artificial persons - a "runaway bot" should something like that ever > exist seems to meet some of the banning criteria of "the person's > actions have been deemed harmful to Agora". > > While I haven't been following the Raybots proposal, I think the main > issues were learned from zombies - there's lots of things (like having > your bot support your own tabled action announcement) that need to be > strictly off-limits for bots in general - the zombie nerf list from a > couple years back is worth a cross reference if that hasn't been done > already. Well, Raybots are safer than zombies in that everything they can do is known in advance while the Agoran consent action to create them is pending – it would probably even be safe to allow them to have full voting strength, because people should in theory object to abusive Raybots being created in the first place, but Agorans have been known to vote for bad ideas on occasion so it's probably worth the safeguard of preventing them voting. I agree that it's probably possible to ban a runaway Raybot, something that seems useful rather than broken (although just exiling it would have the same effect). It's worth noting that although zombies got abused a lot, that sort of abuse seems to have been mostly unique to "artificial person with a single owner" systems. Agora has in the past tried things as simple as the Partnerships mechanic: the more recent version of it was "any group of two or more non-artificial persons can create an artificial person, if they come to some agreement between themselves as to how to control it, and can only create one at a time", and that (amazingly) wasn't abused to any major extent despite there being few limits on what they could do. There definitely *were* abuses in the partnerships era (e.g. the AFO was used for several scams, and P1-P100 – immortalized in the Writ of Fage report – were definitely part of a scam, although one that IIRC didn't work as intended). But that was a minor part of it, and there were partnerships that became a major part of the game for a substantial length of time without any major drama stemming from the fact they were persons. The abuses also tended to generally be interesting rather than boring (e.g. partnerships designed to create interesting scenarios for CFJs but that ultimately didn't do anything, or that time I achieved a "blot everyone" victory condition by using the equivalent of today's PM's Dive power on a partnership to blot numerous players at the same time). The other thing about zombies is that they weren't artificial players, but rather former players being controlled by the rules – many of the zombie protections were to protect *the zombie*, rather than to protect the game from its owner. That's the primary reason why it was dangerous to let them self-blot, deregister, or agree to contracts. I think the only zombie protections that were designed to prevent them being overpowered were the protection against table/support/oppose (which was in my proto), and the protection against recursive zombie use (which probably isn't necessary here because Raybots don't have owners). -- ais523
Re: DIS: (Proto) Raybots
On Sat, 2023-05-20 at 23:43 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-discussion wrote: > Actually, in general persons ceasing to exist is likely to cause > problems, and the current ruleset is careful to avoid it (R869/51's "is > or ever was"; you remain an Agoran person after you die). > > I'm not sure there's a good solution here. Having disabled Raybots just > sit around doing nothing isn't ideal. Auditing the whole ruleset for > issues caused by this is probably good to do anyway but error-prone (and > future proposals are reasonably likely to introduce new problems). We've had artificial persons in the past, and they ceased to exist with no real issues. That predated Promises, which probably need a fix to cease to exist when their creator does. The main potential issue I could think of is "what happens to a CFJ if its judge ceases to exist", but it turns out that there's a specific allowance for that in rule 991 (the nonexistent person remains assigned as the judge). Likewise, rule 649 allows non-persons to bear patent titles (oddly, it even allows non-persons to be *awarded* patent titles). According to the FLR annotations, we were fixing bugs with loss-of-personhood as recently as 2020, so it's historically been considered desirable to have rules that make sense in that context. I checked every use of "person" in the rules to find uses that might cause issues: * Rule 1742 - what happens to a contract if a party ceases to exist? * Rule 2659 - stamps - already addressed in my proto * Rule 2644 - lockout on Stone win condition ends early if the winner ceases to exit - probably not going to matter in practice * Rule 2464 - tournaments have no Gamemaster if their creator is no longer a person, but work just fine in that state * Rule 869 - playerhood - already addressed in my proto * Rule 1023 - definition of "round" - may need fixing, although the definition is used only to fix the First Speaker rule, which wouldn't be affected * Rule 1728 - if an officer tabls an intent as an official action of their office, then ceases to be a person, the new officer can't then resolve the intent if it's an action without objection: potentially buggy, but unlikely to be a major issue in practice * Rule 2530 - potentially weird if a proposal's coauthor ceases to be a person, we might want to reinforce that (although I don't think anything is actually breakable there) * Rule 2493 - regulations - the definitions here break if the promulgator of a regulation ceases to be a person, although I don't think that causes any actual rules to break as a consequence * Rule 2127 - conditional votes - an attempt to endorse a voter breaks if the voter ceases to be a person (even though the non-person's vote is still valid) * Rule 2210 - self-ratification - not broken, only persons can CoE but the CoE remains valid even if the CoEer ceases to be a person * Rule 2478 - investigation of infractions - potentially broken, could most simply be fixed by allowing Favoritism towards non-players * Rule 991 - CFJs - judgehood works fine, but recusal is broken Probably the best approach here is to ensure that loss-of-personhood works: it's something that used to happen at Agora all the time (there have been many eras where a couple of conspiring players could create and destroy an legal-fiction person pretty much at will, and the rules used to use the terminology "first-class person" and "second-class person" so that the legal fnctions could be easily identified). I suspect that regardless of how Raybots goes, it's worth a big fix proposal to make sure that loss of personhood is something that the rule can handle. This does make me think that something like the Raybots proposal is worthwhile, though: the best way to ensure that the ruleset can handle loss of personhood is to make sure it's something that regularly gets tested, thus incentivising us to fix the bugs in it. (The proposal's inspiration came from the direction of "legal-fiction persons would be interesting to have again and we haven't had them for a while, can we find a way of doing them that's significantly different from what we've had before?".) -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: (@Stonemason/@Assessor) SABOTAGE!
On Sun, 2023-05-21 at 10:50 -0700, Forest Sweeney via agora-business wrote: > I change my vote on 8983 to ABSENT, or PRESENT if I cannot change my > vote to something invalid. The wording you want is "I withdraw my vote on 8983" or "I retract my vote on 8983" (these are synonyms). To "change a vote" is to retract your vote, then cast a new one. So it's unclear whether "I change my vote to ABSENT" would have the desired effect or not. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: (@CotC, Yachay) BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 4030 Assigned to Yachay
On Sun, 2023-05-21 at 19:43 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: > Oh, I just finished writing/posting my Judgement when I saw this. I don't > think it's essential for the case and I'd rather not bite more than I can > chew for my CfJ. It felt very difficult as it is. > > You could always just call a new one for that though. That's OK – it isn't your fault that I was a little late in submitting my arguments. I guess it can stay there and be relevant if there's an appeal. Rule 217 cases are always difficult to handle, even for people with a lot more experience. -- ais523
DIS: Re: (@Collector, Herald) BUS: The Never-Ending Dance
On Fri, 2023-05-19 at 11:29 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business wrote: > On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 11:25 AM Kerim Aydin wrote: > > > > > I'd like to thank ais523 for the 4pocalypse where everyone has 44 points. > > > As such, if the 4pocalypse is real, I intend to, with Agoran Consent, > > > grant > > > all current players the badge 4. > > > > I object. -G. > > Side-question: I'm trying to remember if the set of "all current > players" in a tabled action intent is evaluated at the time of intent, > the time of action, or is too unspecified to work as a tabled action > (because the announcer could have meant either). I feel like there > are precedents - anyone remember/point to one? I suspect that under the present rules the tabled action can only work in the case where it's evaluated at the time of the intent, as rule 1728 requires specifying non-default parameter values. This of course doesn't necessarily mean that any specific tabled action attempt must be interpreted in the way that works – it's possible to attempt to take a nonexistent regulated action, it just doesn't work when you do. I also suspect that in this particular case, the specific wording "all current players" unambiguously refers to the player list at the time of the intent, due to the use of the word "current" (which is normally used to clarify, in ambiguous cases, that you're talking about the time at which the message is sent rather than some other relevant time). That said, I don't have any relevant precedents memorised and didn't find one in the parts of the FLR annotations that I checked. They seem most likely to be related to Apathy attempts (a fairly commonly- attempted dependent action that requires specifying a set of players), but given that Apathy attempts almost always fail by a huge margin, there may not have been much cause to CFJ about what happens if they succeed. It's also quite possible that any older precedents will have been invalidated by the change from the old dependent action framework to the tabled action framework that we use nowadays (the nature of the "I intend to …" action was significantly changed, in a way that may well be relevant). -- ais523
DIS: Re: (@Collector, Herald) BUS: The Never-Ending Dance
On Fri, 2023-05-19 at 11:29 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business wrote: > On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 11:25 AM Kerim Aydin wrote: > > > > > I'd like to thank ais523 for the 4pocalypse where everyone has 44 points. > > > As such, if the 4pocalypse is real, I intend to, with Agoran Consent, > > > grant > > > all current players the badge 4. > > > > I object. -G. > > Side-question: I'm trying to remember if the set of "all current > players" in a tabled action intent is evaluated at the time of intent, > the time of action, or is too unspecified to work as a tabled action > (because the announcer could have meant either). I feel like there > are precedents - anyone remember/point to one? I suspect that under the present rules the tabled action can only work in the case where it's evaluated at the time of the intent, as rule 1728 requires specifying non-default parameter values. This of course doesn't necessarily mean that any specific tabled action attempt must be interpreted in the way that works – it's possible to attempt to take a nonexistent regulated action, it just doesn't work when you do. I also suspect that in this particular case, the specific wording "all current players" unambiguously refers to the player list at the time of the intent, due to the use of the word "current" (which is normally used to clarify, in ambiguous cases, that you're talking about the time at which the message is sent rather than some other relevant time). That said, I don't have any relevant precedents memorised and didn't find one in the parts of the FLR annotations that I checked. They seem most likely to be related to Apathy attempts (a fairly commonly- attempted dependent action that requires specifying a set of players), but given that Apathy attempts almost always fail by a huge margin, there may not have been much cause to CFJ about what happens if they succeed. It's also quite possible that any older precedents will have been invalidated by the change from the old dependent action framework to the tabled action framework that we use nowadays (the nature of the "I intend to …" action was significantly changed, in a way that may well be relevant). -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (@Promotor) Proposal Submission - Democratization
On Fri, 2023-05-19 at 09:59 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote: > On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 9:50 AM ais523 via agora-discussion > wrote: > > I sometimes feel like half my arguing at Agora is dedicated to trying > > to persuade people not to repeal the economy. > > > > It rarely works, and the consequence is that most of the time we don't > > have a functional economy. (Having a history of the economy being > > repealed is *also* a problem because it makes it harder to get a new > > economy off the ground – why invest if you think that everything is > > likely going to end up repealed again in the future?) > > Define "works"? tbh, I mostly prefer the periods with no/very limited > economies, because I like the various different subgames on their own, > and whenever we have a "full" economy, then subgame wins become far > too transactional and full of contracts/meta-subgame deals to be very > playable as a standalone competition. "Works" as in inspiring either a replacement economy, or some other sort of replacement gameplay. What normally happens is that there are a few half-hearted attempts to create something new that don't go anywhere, and then the lists fall mostly silent for a few months. Meta-subgame deals don't necessarily require an economy to happen, just two or more subgames. (See, e.g., snail and Murphy trading a stone win for a horse win – as far as I can tell, that transaction didn't involve the economy at all.) The real fix for those, based on experience at other nomics, is to either design the subgame in a way that makes it hard for that sort of deal to have any influence on the subgame, or to create a rule banning players from cooperation for a subgame win. They also don't necessarily seem to happen even when there are lots of subgames and a strong economy (e.g. in the AAA era, the *other*, non- AAA, subgames basically got to run autonomously and I don't recall anyone trying to buy or sell advantages in them; and trading subgame- defined assets seems to have been the intended gameplay of the AAA). (Another interesting data point: Promises were originally partially intended as a method of letting people mint their own currency, backed by things like officer perks. This use never caught on, however, even though there have been times where it could have served as a replacement for a repealed economy. One of the things that I'm hoping for with my Raybots proto is that we end up with tradeable Promises backed by Raybot actions rather than player actions; because Raybots have a limited lifespan, we'd have a currency that naturally decays over time, and because they don't create ongoing obligations on any of the human players, there would likely be less aversion to creating them.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (@Promotor) Proposal Submission - Democratization
On Fri, 2023-05-19 at 09:37 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote: > On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 9:26 AM Yachay Wayllukuq via agora- > discussion wrote: > > With radiance and Stamps seemingly on their way out, I believe that your > > Officer salary problem is part of a larger problem of Agora overall needing > > a proper economy again, not a voting strength problem. > > So offer that as a package? In my experience, when things are taken > away with the promise of new things to be added later, those things > stay taken away, and the new things never arrive. I sometimes feel like half my arguing at Agora is dedicated to trying to persuade people not to repeal the economy. It rarely works, and the consequence is that most of the time we don't have a functional economy. (Having a history of the economy being repealed is *also* a problem because it makes it harder to get a new economy off the ground – why invest if you think that everything is likely going to end up repealed again in the future?) I'd much rather take the route of trying to get the Radiance/Stamps system functional again, than of trying to repeal it. (Stamps in particular are one of the most powerful "new player perks" we've seen, and I suspect that that's a good thing.) I'd especially be against repealing it without a replacement. (Incidentally, IIRC many of the "officer perks" that Yachay is talking about elsethread were intentionally added a few years ago, during a time when there was no functional economy, as an attempt to give the officers some sort of reward – because there was nothing economic to reward them with, we needed to use some sort of more direct reward instead. Some of them are still around nowadays, like the Gray Ribbon.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposal 8971
On Fri, 2023-05-19 at 00:01 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-discussion wrote: > It doesn't do anything. It has insufficient power to create blots. Ah right, AI 1 but it needs 1.7 (rule 2555). So I agree with you, false alarm. Assuming that the author didn't intentionally set the AI incorrectly, though, this is still evidence that the original proposal was ill- advised. -- ais523
DIS: Re: OFF: [Assessor] Resolution of Proposal 8971
On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 23:09 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-official wrote: > The full text of each ADOPTED proposal is included below: > [snip] > > Grant each player that did not vote FOR this proposal 2 blots. Whoever decided to propose this immediately before several new players joined (with timing that meant that they had no ability to vote on it and thus save themself from the blots), you should be ashamed of yourself. (I think it was mentioned at the time that it was unfair on inactive players – we missed that it'd be unfair on new players too, but it's a similar principle.) The players who have been around a little longer should probably be working on cleaning them off the players who just joined? I'm willing to use my weekly expunge on this, but am not sure which of the new players to use it on. (I'm planning to use it later this week on one of the new players, whoever's had the least help from other established players, randomizing if there's a tie.) -- ais523
DIS: (Proto) Raybots
amount of radiance to grant that much radiance to a specified player. A player CAN spend a specified amount of radiance to grant that much radiance to a specified Raybot. }}} [Allows Raybots to transfer radiance, meaning that players can gain radiance by cashing a Raybot-created promise. The cashing conditions of those promises can therefore be used to define Radiance-gaining conditions. Because this draws from the Raybot's radiance supply, such conditions are experimental/temporary.] In rule 2659, amend {{{ For each person there is a corresponding type of stamp. }}} to {{{ For each non-Raybot person there is a corresponding type of stamp. }}} and {{{ Any player CAN win by paying N Stamps, where N is the current number of active players and each specified Stamp is of a different type. }}} to {{{ Any player CAN win by paying N Stamps, where N is the current number of active non-Raybot players and each specified Stamp is of a different type. }}} [Prevent Raybots from being counting towards Stamp victories, as they would badly unbalance them if created in number.] I'm interested in feedback about both the general idea, and the wording of the proposal to implement it. I am encouraged that, despite being an apparently major mechanic, it doesn't add much text to the rules, because it's mostly building on what's there at the moment. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Referee] Scamster
On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 18:57 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote: > On 5/18/23 18:54, ais523 via agora-business wrote: > > -- > > H. ais523, Champion×17, M.N., D.N.Phil, Marvy Scamster > > Appreciate the little humble brag in the signature :p A portion of that was the result of scams, and scams have historically been a source of the Scamster title itself, and the fact that I already had the Scamster title was relevant, so it felt appropriate to use the whole title (although I had to look it up – it's been a while). It's the sort of thing that's best brought out only on special occasions or when it happens to be extremely relevant to the message, though. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Intent to register to Agora
On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 18:49 -0500, blob via agora-discussion wrote: > I, being the new player, totally agree with this. I would be more than > willing to put some sort of marker in front of my name, as others in the > past have done. How should I go about changing my name--or how have others > in the past done it? Agora doesn't have an "official" concept of names of players: all that's required of, e.g. the Registrar, is to track "information sufficient to identify [...] each player". So a player's name is, in effect, the sequence of letters that other players generally use when referring to them, and to change it, you just need to persuade other players to refer to you in a certain way. Historically, formatting a name change as an action by announcement, i.e. "I change my name to …", has normally been enough to cause other players to start using the new name (except in cases where players attempted to change their name so often that the other players lost track), but there's no actual formal process. Typically Agorans are willing to refer to other players in the way they'd like to be referred to, within reason (which is why there's a tradition of asking new players for their preferred name, even though that isn't required by the rules), so they're generally happy to comply with reasonable requests to use a different name. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Sacrilege, but more this time
On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 21:32 +0100, ais523 via agora-discussion wrote: > On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 13:16 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business > wrote: > > I informally risk being guilty of favoritism 7 days from now, by > > saying that the combination of CFJ calling and parenthetical reminder > > that it may fail is enough disclaimer to avoid no faking. I'll also > > note that Janet pointed out CFJ 1881 which asked if R2029 created a > > duty to dance, and in fact Judge omd of that case found that R2029 > > *does* apply penalties to the Marvy (if there were any Marvy), and > > CFJ 2589 which raised the matter again/independently. So it's not > > 100% cut-and-dried that R2029's exhortation to dance has no legal > > effect. And I'd forgotten at least one of those cases myself, so I > > wouldn't expect 4st to know about them. > > Are there any Marvy at the moment? IIRC the definition was something > along the lines of "a player who has increased voting power but is not > an officer", but I can't properly remember it (it was over a decade ago > at this point). Just happened to notice this: On Tue, 2023-05-16 at 15:21 -0500, nix via agora-official wrote: > Marvy:4st, ais523, CreateSource, > cuddlybanana, duck, G., Janet, > juan, Murphy, R. Lee, snail, > Trigon, Vitor Gonçalves Marvy is a patent title that's currently in use. I suspect that this has no impact on rule 2029 for much the same reason that a player named "Marvy" wouldn't, but it feels like a relevant data point. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Sacrilege, but more this time
On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 14:01 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote: > On Thu, May 18, 2023 at 1:32 PM ais523 via agora-discussion > wrote: > > That said, I suspect the word in R2029 is currently undefined: I don't > > think "a definition that was in place at the time the rule was adopted" > > is one of the things that we can legally use to interpret the rules. > > (In fact, given that rules of lower power can't outright define terms > > in higher-power rules – just clarify them – it may be very hard to > > define a term in a power-4 rule at all if it has no common meaning, and > > after this much time, I doubt it has a common meaning.) > > It was CFJ 2585, and you (Judge ais523) found the exact opposite of > what you just said above. In > https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?2585, Judge ais523 > wrote: > > > However, by the implicit mention in CFJ 1881, > > and the explicit precedent of CFJ 1534 (that in a rule of historical > > significance such as 104 or 2029, terms used in the rule have the > > meaning they had when the rule was created), not to mention rule 1586, I > > can only conclude that "marvy" in rule 2029 has the meaning it did when > > the Fountain was created. This is a nomic, and rules change over time! I think my ruling in CFJ 2585, based as it was primarily on CFJ 1534, missed that the precedent of CFJ 1534 was probably no longer relevant (and suspect that it may be incorrect). The judge of CFJ 1881 may have made the same mistake. At the time of CFJ 1534, rule 217 looked like this: All Judgements must be in accordance with the Rules; however, if the Rules are silent, inconsistent, or unclear on the Statement to be Judged, then the Judge shall consider game custom, commonsense, past Judgements, and the best interests of the game before applying other standards. This is much more permissive than the current rule 217: in addition to applying only to judgements, it explicitly mentions "other standards" which can be used in cases where none of the four main tests work. At the time of CFJ 1881, it looked like this, somewhat more similar to the current version: When interpreting and applying the rules, the text of the rules takes precedence. Where the text is silent, inconsistent, or unclear, it is to be augmented by game custom, common sense, past judgements, and consideration of the best interests of the game. but I'm not sure whether the judge noticed that the change might potentially cause the precedent of CFJ 1534 to no longer apply. Additionally, CFJ 1534 was itself a judgement based on rule 217 tests, specifically the best interests of the game: that ruling that Michael Norrish had *continuously* been the Speaker since the start of Agora would break everything (the office of the Speaker used to be *much* more important to the functioning of Agora than it is nowadays), and thus in cases where rules were unclear, it was better to rule that transferrence of the Speaker worked correctly. This means that the precedent might not apply to cases where the the rule 217 tests leaned in a different direction. There's also the factor of "this fits too perfectly to not mention": the rules in place at the time of the Town Fountain's construction were repealed at the time of CFJ 1881, but by the time of CFJ 2585, the underlying rules had been re-enacted in pretty much the same form as they had originally. As such, the old definition of "marvy" was possible to apply to the rules at the time more or less directly. I suspect that the me of 15 years ago would have been so excited that the precedent *could* be applied in this way, that I didn't stop to consider whether I *should*; in fact I suspect that I read the relevant old judgements from the FLR annotations rather than actually reading the judgement itself to see if it were still relevant. (My argument to rule 1586 seems wrong, given that "marvy" wasn't rules-defined at the time.) Or perhaps this is just a case of "the ais523 who has been following Agora for over 15 years spots things that the ais523 who had been there for only one year didn't". Apparently I can still in theory appeal the CFJ, but would require 728 support to do so, which might be hard to obtain in the current gamestate. So we may just have to leave the precedent there. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Sacrilege, but more this time
On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 13:16 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business wrote: > I informally risk being guilty of favoritism 7 days from now, by > saying that the combination of CFJ calling and parenthetical reminder > that it may fail is enough disclaimer to avoid no faking. I'll also > note that Janet pointed out CFJ 1881 which asked if R2029 created a > duty to dance, and in fact Judge omd of that case found that R2029 > *does* apply penalties to the Marvy (if there were any Marvy), and > CFJ 2589 which raised the matter again/independently. So it's not > 100% cut-and-dried that R2029's exhortation to dance has no legal > effect. And I'd forgotten at least one of those cases myself, so I > wouldn't expect 4st to know about them. Are there any Marvy at the moment? IIRC the definition was something along the lines of "a player who has increased voting power but is not an officer", but I can't properly remember it (it was over a decade ago at this point). That said, I suspect the word in R2029 is currently undefined: I don't think "a definition that was in place at the time the rule was adopted" is one of the things that we can legally use to interpret the rules. (In fact, given that rules of lower power can't outright define terms in higher-power rules – just clarify them – it may be very hard to define a term in a power-4 rule at all if it has no common meaning, and after this much time, I doubt it has a common meaning.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: [Proto] Clarifying Intentions
On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 13:48 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote: > Any feedback on the below before I submit it? The example should be introduced with "for example" not "For example" (the capitalisation is wrong for mid-sentence). Other than that, it makes sense. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: (@Collector, Dream keeper) Intent to Register to Agora
On Thu, 2023-05-18 at 11:16 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote: > hehe we can still fool old players sometimes - "intend" has a > "specific meaning" for registration as well as for other contexts, so > beokirby registered exactly as per the rules: > > > An Unregistered person CAN (unless explicitly forbidden or > > prevented by the rules) register by publishing a message that > > indicates reasonably clearly and reasonably unambiguously that e > > intends to become a player at that time. It's still worth warning the new players, though, because "intend" wording works for registration, and (for a different reason) for the first step in taking a tabled action, but doesn't work for anything else. IIRC the reason it works for registration is partly that new players kept getting it wrong, and partly because we wanted to change the registration rules to have an entire new set of "did my registration work?" CFJs. That change was ages ago now, though, so I might be misremembering the details. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: Intent to register to Agora
On Wed, 2023-05-17 at 19:13 -0500, nix via agora-business wrote: > On 5/17/23 19:10, Christian Arguinzoni via agora-business wrote: > > I would like to register for the nomic game Agora. My preferred name is > > blob. Thank you! > > Welcome! I grant blob a Welcome Package. This is interesting because > this might be the first time we have a new player with the same name as > a previous player. I'm not sure how best to handle it in historical > documents. Curious what people think? I vaguely remember that precedent is along the lines of "a player's name in Agora is the name that other players use to refer to em". If a player attempts to select an ambiguous nickname, the resulting name can't be used to unambiguously refer to em, so it doesn't work as a name. If someone posted "Blob" to the mailing lists without clarification, which person would we take it as referring to? I think it would depend on context, being an unambiguous reference to the new player in some contexts, and being ambiguous in others. As such, I think that anyone who has a duty to identify a *player* can just use "Blob" unambiguously, whereas anyone who has a duty to identify a *person* must clarify which "Blob" e is talking about. Historical documents like the Registrar's and Herald's reports thus most likely need footnotes to disambiguate. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: (@Surveyor) Commune entry
On Tue, 2023-05-16 at 19:28 -0400, Katie Davenport via agora-business wrote: > I intend to: > > Enter the current tournament of Commune as a participant. > > Set my (Left, Middle, Right) constructors to construct (7, B, D), > respectively. > > Invest in Olive. This is a little ambiguous, because it's unclear from your message whether you're doing it now or planning to do it later. It's best not to use words like "intend" unless you actually are trying to indicate that you're planning to do something in the future rather than now. I recommend repeating the message without the "intend" working, e.g. "I enter the current tournament of Commune as a participant", because I'm not convinced that it works as it's currently written. -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: on invisbilitating
On Fri, 2023-05-12 at 06:04 -0700, Kerim Aydin via agora-business wrote: > > Further it is clear from the text itself that it was intended > that this definition be "hidden" and continue to provide definitional > guidance (that's unique afaik when thinking of other old gamestate): It can't provide definitional guidance. Rule 217 contains a complete list of things that can be used to interpret and apply the rules where their text is silent, and "the text of adopted proposals" isn't on the list. (So neither the text of proposal 4513, nor the text of proposal 8961 which references it, is relevant in the interpretation.) Do you have a past judgement to reference for the definition? (There's no game custom remaining at this point – I remembered that Invisibilitating had once been defined, which is why I voted AGAINST, but couldn't remember the details – and common sense and the best interests of the game may argue towards leaving the term defined or undefined but don't provide a definition.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: Fwd: [Arbitor] CFJ 4023 Assigned to 4st
On Thu, 2023-05-11 at 00:55 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: > Sorry, I meant practical for the purposes of applying "*Any* ambiguity in > the specification of a rule change causes that change to be void and > without effect." > > Of course, this compromise-based definition of how ambiguous something > needs to be in order to be ambiguous for Agora can change and vary and I'm > not entirely sure what that definition is supposed to be right now, but I > do feel like it's very likely to fall into one that I don't agree with > personally but that I have no problem playing along with, because it's all > compromise anyways. We have a rule about how to interpret the rules (rule 217); we need to rely on that when determining what the "any ambiguity in the specification of a rule change…" rule means. I agree that "any" has a clear meaning, but "ambiguity" doesn't – and the rule 217 tests make it clear that it should be interpreted in a way that makes the game playable. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: Fwd: [Arbitor] CFJ 4023 Assigned to 4st
On Wed, 2023-05-10 at 22:04 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: > I'd really just need to prove once that one singular point in the mechanism > is ambiguous, to any degree, to add "any ambiguity". It would help to > define "ambiguous" as "capable of being understood in two or more possible > senses or ways". The unambiguity requirement is very narrow – it doesn't stop rule changes on ambiguities in general, the ambiguity has to specifically be an ambiguity in the way that the rule change is specified. That only gives a very narrow area in which an ambiguity might occur, and most rule changes are specified unambiguously by giving the old and new text. The only situation I can remember where it was contentious as to whether a rule change was specified ambiguously was proposal 8644 (see <https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?3950> for a description of what happened). In that case, a judge found that the specification was not in fact ambiguous. The vast majority of rule changes are specified considerably less ambiguously than that. -- ais523
Re: DIS: [Draft Proposal] You can't just call points radiance and not have them do
On Mon, 2023-05-08 at 16:39 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-discussion wrote: > On 5/8/23 05:33, secretsnail9 via agora-discussion wrote: > > > A player CAN, by paying a fee of 5 brights, turn a specified rule > > Radiant. > > A radiant rule CANNOT be repealed. The player that turned a rule > > Radiant > > CAN, by announcement, make it cease being Radiant. > > No. Please no. This restriction is trivially circumventable with an AI-2 proposal (and a proposal equal to the power of the radiant rule could amend it into nothingness), so there isn't actually anything broken/breakable here. There are other issues with it, though (it doesn't do what it seems to, and it isn't tracked properly; there are also arguments that it doesn't have enough Power to work). It could maybe be changed to something along the lines of "specify a rule of power below 2, any proposals that would repeal or amend that rule have their AI increased to 2"? That would have similar functionality to the apparently intended functionality, but very little risk of breaking things. -- ais523
Re: DIS: [Draft Proposal] You can't just call points radiance and not have them do
On Mon, 2023-05-08 at 04:33 -0500, secretsnail9 via agora-discussion wrote: > [I hope you like this idea! Please let me know your thoughts, especially > about the Bright Abilities. This system could easily be added to, with > alternate ways to gain radiance! Or if someone comes up with one really > good radiance gaining game, this would work with it.] The basic system seems fine, but everything generally seems rather expensive? I think this won't function at all unless it's paired with better ways to gain radiance or easier ways to obtain stamps. (As it is, creating stamps is almost impossible unless a new player joins.) As an example, imagine a new player trying to do anything useful with stamps. They can get to approximately 100 radiance by massively devaluing their stamp (as seen with Yachay recently, who would have struggled to get significantly more than 100). Spending that would let them seal 10 stamps, but they no longer have the resources to obtain any, so maybe they only get to seal 5 stamps, but they're going to have trouble obtaining even those. I guess one way to think about it is to consider how much time investment a Bright reflects (taking into account the fact that new players have some inherent advantages which gives them a starting point with more than 0 "time investment" banked). Using Yachay's win as a measuring point, one and a half months were enough for a new player to gain, in effect, two Brights; thus it seems like it's likely that without new player advantages, each Bright is going to take at least a couple of months' worth of effort and neglect of other parts of the game, which means that most of the Bright Abilities are too expensive for people to consider using; I'd expect them to be confined primarily to the victory-related requirements. (The system as a whole is somewhat reminiscent of Leadership Tokens, which IIRC people were unwilling to use for anything other than the victory condition.) In terms of the abilities themselves, I have a feeling that there should be something along the lines of "prevent this proposal passing", which can be circumvented by making the same proposal week after week until the obstructor runs out of Brights, but not by submitting the same proposal repeatedly in the same week; that's an example of an ability that is potentially useful economically rather than just as a victory marker. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Plan B
On Mon, 2023-05-08 at 13:55 +0100, ais523 via agora-discussion wrote: > my current thoughts are along the lines of "add Radiance for > participation actions like proposing / officiating / judging / even > voting And to clarify: by this I mean voting *at all*, not specifically for contrary votes (which are clearly trouble). -- ais523
DIS: Re: BUS: [proposal] Plan B
On Mon, 2023-05-08 at 01:24 -0400, Janet Cobb via agora-business wrote: > Given a new player winning within a month and a half by stamps by > simply trading, something needs to change I disagree with this part of your statement – I don't think that there's anything inherently wrong with a new player being able to win within a month and a half by trading: * The fact that Yachay is new gave em something valuable to trade, Yachay stamps. The stamps system is inherently designed so that players who haven't previously engaged with it have an advantage, so we should expect new players to be able to take advantage of that. This sort of win can't easily be repeated by Yachay in the future: in order to pull it off, e's created a situation in which a) almost everyone who's economically active owns a Yachay stamp and thus b) not only are they hard to trade, they're also hard to create (with Dream of Wealth losing much of its power). Along similar lines, most established players would have difficulty doing the same thing, so it isn't like this is an overly easy route to victory. * Agora is probably making its victory conditions too hard nowadays: one and a half months historically seems to have been about right for a victory, for someone who's trying hard to get it. My first win of Agora was likewise around a month and a half after registering (April 28 2008 to June 17 2008). Likewise with Alexis (March 7 2009 to April 27 2009). Bucky has won Agora four times despite never being a player at all. I was once able to keep up the pace of winning every 1½ months for an entire year (a sequence of 8 wins starting after Agora's Birthday 2008 and with the last on Agora's Birthday 2009). * Yachay's victory was beneficial for several players, such as me: I'm a long way behind, e.g., Murphy or snail in the Radiance race. A Radiance reset has effectively no negative impact on me, and yet it makes it harder for players to challenge attempts by me to Radiance win in the future. With wins by new players, it's often the case that more established players could stop the win, but choose not to (e.g. I could have stopped this win by reacting to the timing scam and winning first – I realised what was going on at the time – and I noticed the scam that Alexis used for eir first win at the time but likewise chose to stay silent). * In addition to devaluing eir stamps, Yachay also had to sacrifice in other parts of the game to make the win work: in particular, e was locked out of most of the Dreams due to eir need to print stamps. This means that aiming for this win gave em less influence in other parts of the game, such as the proposals system. This would be a more relevant drawback if more of the Dreams did something useful, but in general it does make sense that there's a tradeoff here. All in all, I don't think there's a bug related to this in particular to be fixed. Repealing almost all the ways to gain Radiance does need fixing, of course; but I don't think that repealing the others is a good way to do it. After thinking things over during the revision process for my thesis, my current thoughts are along the lines of "add Radiance for participation actions like proposing / officiating / judging / even voting, remove the reset on Radiance wins, and increase the amount of Radiance that's required to win in order to reduce the rate of wins obtainable purely by grinding"; when I find time to finish off my thesis I'll try to formulate the argument for that more clearly. -- ais523